The uneven regional geography of labour precariousness: the case of Greek design industry

ABSTRACT

The paper attempts to unveil the precarious working conditions of the design industry and the ways that precariousness is distributed throughout space. In more details, the paper researches the working conditions of graphic, web, interior and industrial designers in the Greek design industry and contributes to the understanding of the uneven regional geography of precariousness. We use a large dataset that was produced through an online questionnaire (Avdikos et al, 2015) and through descriptive statistics, we analyse the working conditions of three occupational categories: freelancers; full-time employees and owners of mainly very small design sector enterprises. The analysis shows that Greek designers work in particularly precarious conditions, considering their annual income, their working hours and their work-related injuries, especially compared with other service sectors of the Greek economy. Moreover, the spatial distribution of precariousness is highly uneven, especially for the full-time employees between the capital region of Attiki and the other 12 Greek regions.

KEYWORDS:

• Creative industries
• design
• precariousness
• regional
• Greece
• labour

Notes on contributors

Vasilis Avdikos is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economic and Regional Development in Panteion University, Athens since 2014. He holds a doctorate from the University of Sheffield and an MSc degree from the University of Strathclyde. His research interests include urban and regional development and the cultural and creative industries. He has published a number of research articles in international journals and he is the author of two monographs and two other collective volumes. Moreover, Vasilis has been a consultant in the Region of Attiki and the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports.

Athanasios Kalogeresis, is an Assistant Professor at the School of Spatial Planning and Development, Faculty of Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where he teaches economic geography, urban and regional planning and globalization. His research interests and recent work evolve around local and regional development and various aspects of the organization of production (spatial, social, institutional and cultural). Within these broad themes, he has worked and published in a number of specific areas, such as the creative economy; the analysis of new forms of (multinational) organization of economic activities; the role of multinational production and trade in knowledge spillovers; relations between international and local productive systems, the sources of regional disparities and the role of human capital and human capabilities.

Notes

1 www.statistics.gr (2010) data for the industries of Printing, Publishing, Film-Video-Music, TV and Radio, Architecture, Advertising, Arts and Entertainment, Museums and Libraries.

2 Although one might think that the difference between the annual earnings in Attiki and other Greek regions is offset by a lower cost of living in smaller cities, this is only true for real estate prices, as usually, Athens (Attiki) has 10–30% higher real estate prices than the rest of Greece. But official statistics show that the cost of living in Athens (except real estate) is approximately the same as other smaller cities (www.statistics.gr, 2017).

3 Average number of actual weekly hours of work in main job, by sex, professional status, full-time/part-time and occupation (hours) [lfsa_ewhais] for the occupational group: Professionals, www.eurostat.eu, last accessed 02/03/2016.

4 “Injuries for work” contains musculo-skeletal disorders, stress depression and anxiety, headache and eyestrain, cardiovascular and pulmonary disorders, skin problems and hearing disorders.

5 It should be noted that education was coded in a descending order (i.e. 1: PhD, 6: secondary education).